The lessons and hardships of Hurricane Sandy are still on display one year after the storm flooded New York subways tunnels and waterfront neighborhoods.

Broken concrete marks the remains of a 5-mile beach boardwalk in the Rockaways section of Queens. In the Breezy Point neighborhood, rows of vacant housing lots show where flooding and fires converged, with no access for emergency responders.

Seventy-two people across the region lost their lives in the storm that made landfall on the evening of Oct. 29, 2013. Weather scientists today are studying how to be more plain-spoken and persuasive when it comes to disaster warnings and evacuation notices, said Jason Tuell, who became director of the 675-employee National Weather Service eastern region after the storm.

An independent review of the agency’s performance during Sandy found that the ferocity and path of the storm were well anticipated. But too many people failed to grasp the significance, especially when it came to rising ocean waters. Online flood maps, deemed clumsy, also are being redesigned.

“We really need to communicate storm surge in ways that people can understand and translate into action,” Tuell said. “When is the water going to hit my toes? How deep is going to get. ... That is what the people and decision makers need to know.”

Across the globe, meteorologists and seismologists are turning their attention to the social science of communication to prepare for the next natural disaster.

The Japanese Meteorological Agency has overhauled its warnings for major earthquakes and tsunamis in response to the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 11, 2011.

During the disaster, automated alerts were broadcast on the national news network NHK before shock waves reached Tokyo. But initial estimates of a 7.7-magnitude earthquake and a 10- to 20-foot tsunami vastly underestimated the fourth strongest quake on record.

Several updates followed, but many people had tuned out and assumed they were safe. More than 20,000 died in the tsunami that measured more than 35 feet in some areas.

Japan’s severe early warnings now avoid numbers and specific estimates, said Takeshi Koizumi, senior coordinator for international earthquake and tsunami information at the agency.

“So the strategy is by the first warning, we get people evacuated without thinking,” Koizumi said. “We will not do this operation for every earthquake. If we do so we will lose the confidence of people, like in Aesop’s Fables.”

NKH newscasters, typically restrained in their delivery, have been coached to dial up their emotions.

U-T reporter Morgan Lee recently visited New York, Japan and China through a fellowship with the East-West Center, established by the U.S. Congress to promote better understanding among the peoples of the U.S., Asia and the Pacific.